For any bundled offer combining service and equipment into a single fee, including any bundled offer providing a discount for the purchase of multiple services, such provider shall make such offer available without discrimination to any customer that owns a navigation device, and shall further offer such customer a discount from such offer equal to an amount not less than the monthly rental fee reasonably allocable to the lease of the operator-supplied navigation device included with that offer. For purposes of this section, in determining what is “reasonably allocable,” the Commission will consider in its evaluation whether the allocation is consistent with one or more of the following factors: (i) an allocation determination approved by a local, state, or federal government entity; (ii) the monthly lease fee as stated on the cable system rate card for the navigation device when offered by the cable operator separately from a bundled offer; and (iii) the actual cost of the navigation device amortized over a period of no more than 60 months.

On my bill they are giving me an $8.00 discount but the fees associated with my CC's and TA's add up to $16.45 for my two (2) TiVo's. I'm struggling with whether the language of the ruling (quoted above) means they should discount the cost of the TA and CC for my 2nd TiVo.

By charging me $3.80 per TA I don't believe they are truly offering an equivalent service price.

It's costing me $6.75 ($3.80 for the TA plus the $2.95 for the M-card) to receive HD programming. A normal BH customer who wants to view the same HD channels would need at least a BH HD receiver. I can't find the current price on their website (nothing like upfront pricing) but remember the monthly "rental" was around $9.95. So the $6.75 your paying is less than a normal BH customer who just wants to view the same HD channels that your able to record.

I'm not thrilled about paying BH an additional $6.75 but it's better than paying them $10 just to view the channels or paying them even more for their POS DVR.

It's costing me $6.75 ($3.80 for the TA plus the $2.95 for the M-card) to receive HD programming. A normal BH customer who wants to view the same HD channels would need at least a BH HD receiver. I can't find the current price on their website (nothing like upfront pricing) but remember the monthly "rental" was around $9.95. So the $6.75 your paying is less than a normal BH customer who just wants to view the same HD channels that your able to record.

I'm not thrilled about paying BH an additional $6.75 but it's better than paying them $10 just to view the channels or paying them even more for their POS DVR.

I have a friend in Pinellas county who uses the BHN DVR send me his bill. They charge $9.95 for DVR Service and another $8.00 for an HD DVR. In his case he has two DVRs so he's charged $9.95 + $9.95 + $8.00 + $8.00 = $35.90. Equivalent service with TiVo would be $13.50 in fees from BHN plus whatever subscription fees are paid to TiVo. Assuming primary DVR at $19.95 and 2nd DVR at $14.95 would yield a total cost of $13.50 + $19.95 + $14.95 = $48.40 or only $12.50 more than BHN's crappy DVR.

If you start factoring in the value of lifetime subscription's the breakeven point is pretty soon. Assuming a 36-month DVR lifespan and lifetime costing $500 on the first DVR and $400 on the 2nd DVR. $900 / 36 = $25 / month making the effective cost of going with TiVo ($13.50 + $25.00 = $38.50) or essentially the same as the generic DVR. Only advantage of staying the the crappy BHN DVR is free replacement if it breaks.

I'm still getting 123 -- BBC -- and I presume I still get the others (most, I don't care about) with just my M-Card.

How about the rest of you? Do you see this as stopping soon?

M

Quote:

Originally Posted by windracer

Got a letter in the mail today from Brighthouse, more channels moving to SDV next month.
Quote:
May 11, 2011

Dear windracer,

Bright House Networks would like to thank you for choosing us as your video service provider. We are writing to you as a valued customer in order to provide advance notice of important upcoming changes that affect your ability to access certain programming on unidirectional retail devices. Bright House Networks is rolling out a new digital video delivery technology in your area known as Switched Digital Video ("SDV"). SDV is a robust bandwidth-management system that makes it possible for us to offer more digital video programming services than ever before, including new HD channels. In order to launch even more new video services, we are migrating some existing services to the SDV system which is a bi-directional platform. Unfortunately, your unidirectional retail device does not support bi-directional programming delivered over the SDV system. Please be advised, therefore, beginning on or after June 14, 2011, Bright House Networks will deliver the following packages on the SDV system and this programming will not be available on unidirectional retail devices until further notice:

If you wish to receive the above services, you may contact Bright House Networks to obtain a digital set-top box or similar bi-directional device that is capable of supporting two-way communications with the SDV system. You may continue to use your unidirectional retail device with your Bright House Networks provided CableCARD to receive video programming other than the programming delivered on the SDV system. Bright House Networks will notify you in advance of any other programming changes. Please contact us at 1-866-976-EASY if you have any questions. We thank you again for choosing Bright House Networks.

Sincerely,
Bright House Networks

Nothing I really care about except BBCA and maybe IFC. I have the one TA so no big deal still.

A TA prevents MRV which is a requirement in our house. And, cannot see a benefit to having a TA even if we didn't do MRV. We'll miss BBC and IFC, Flix, and Sundance when they finally do the change, but for the occasional shows, it's not worth the tradeoff.

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Yeah, apparently BBC (123) never got switched over to SDV like that letter back in May said it would. But I prefer recording Doctor Who from BBCA-HD (1278) and for some reason my one TA won't pick it up ("you may need a CableCARD decoder to receive this channel"). Strange.

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Yeah, apparently BBC (123) never got switched over to SDV like that letter back in May said it would. But I prefer recording Doctor Who from BBCA-HD (1278) and for some reason my one TA won't pick it up ("you may need a CableCARD decoder to receive this channel"). Strange.

I had a similar problem on one of my daughters HD channels a while back. It was working on one TA and not working on the other. I ended up switching the TA's to see if the problem followed the problematic TA. It did not. I think it may have been a signal quality issue and tightening the connections corrected the problem. I've also found the the BHN forum on DSLReports is the best place to get support on this sort of issue. Also tweeting BrightHouseCare is another method to get support.

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Reconnected at 3:35. What a relief it was to be reassured here, as I poorly reported earlier. It was great to receive the message of the outage via iPhone, as computer access was too erratic to try after my first post. Especially concerned as a lightning strike killed our Vizio last Sunday, and just getting new one up and running.

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This might not be the best thread to post this in, but today I received an e-mail from Brighthouse announcing their new iPad app:

Oh well.

You are correct. You must be in your home (on your home network) in order to use the App.

While I'm at it I would like to introduce myself...

My name is Gary and I recently joined the Corporate Social Media Team at Bright House Networks as their Online Forums Manager. Some of you may already know me as Ispgeek here and other communities on the web however effective today my username will change to BHNtechXpert.

The purpose behind this is to give everyone a consistent username across all online communities and to make it easy for you to identify that you are in fact speaking to an official representative of the company. My contact information will also be made available to each of these communities and I will also be working closely with each community operator to ensure that no question or situation is left unanswered.

In the past year Bright House Networks has fully embraced Social Media (Twitter, Facebook) as a powerful tool to interact with and support our customers in near real-time. Your response to these enhanced interaction options has been nothing less than amazing. The next evolutionary step for the Bright House Networks Social Media program includes reaching out to online forums, blogs and other unique and exciting forms of online communication to be announced soon and this is where I come into the picture.

My reach will include the entire Bright House Networks footprint (Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and California). If you have a technical issue, concern or anything that might cause your experience with Bright House Networks to be anything less than outstanding...or if you have a comment, suggestion or feedback on how we can improve our services or processes to better meet your needs I want to know about it.

In addition to the above I’ll also keep you up to date on all the latest and greatest technology and services Bright House Networks has to offer including an occasional taste of coming soon technology and services and how to best utilize them in your busy lifestyles.

I receive immediate updates from each of these communities and I will normally respond to inquires quickly. Feel free to private message me anytime and I look forward to working with you.